


Soliloquy

by prayed



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions
Genre: Angst, DSOD, M/M, Prideshipping, mentions Transcend Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prayed/pseuds/prayed
Summary: It doesn’t feel like you’re alone when someone’s on your mind.
Relationships: Atem/Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	Soliloquy

**Author's Note:**

> "Lovers are always waiting. They hate to wait; they love to wait. Wedged between these two feelings, lovers come to think a great deal about time, and to understand it very well, in their perverse way."
> 
> —Anne Carson, from Eros the Bittersweet; Now Then.

So immense and so absolute, like gravity, was aloneness.

There simply wasn't enough time for it. For pausing to notice it.

The heaviness was just something he learned to push through, like everything else.

After all, Kaiba was a busy man.

And he had thought things were moving at a good pace. But it dawned on him suddenly that he had spent too much money on building an AI that was just like talking to himself. About Atem. 

A little more flirtatiousness to his voice, and a little more bulk to his body, and golden ringlets to accentuate the muscles in his arms for reasons even Kaiba couldn't explain...

But even all these decorations couldn't hide the cruel reality that this was his own memory of someone long dead.

Had it been worth it?

He felt something looking at it, something warm, looking at it all over at every angle, watching it smile at him, and he also felt empty. In the end, he wrote down that it needed many improvements and that was that. 

Back to work.

Cloudy skies. Extra trash on the floor, flies buzzing, a mess of paperwork, and him passed out on his desk in exhaustion. What else was new? He'd call someone in to clean up later.

Rainy days. He was missing something. He was a puzzle too, in a way. 

He felt his lips mouthing something thoughtlessly, hoping the spirit would somehow hear. 

"Wait for me."

The Millennium Puzzle brought out something strange in him. He almost wished his body...

Never mind.

The sharp edges digging into his hand wouldn't stop him from holding it delicately by its base. Much like the AI, he noted that it was missing pieces.

Once the clouds passed, he took the puzzle with him to watch the stars, silent and distant whether from the space station or down on Earth. If they got in his way, even the stars wouldn’t stop him. Mokuba caught him at one point or another, happy to see him getting fresh air and not at what he held in his hand.

As it started to rain again, Kaiba took the puzzle with him to go speak with Yugi. Seagulls casted off into the sky with loud cries as he walked down the glistening streets, holding it close to his chest.

When at last the time came where Yugi put in the last piece of the puzzle, nothing happened.

Nothing.

He pulled away from it offering a quiet apology and Kaiba finally realized it.

It had been empty all along.

He felt something crack inside him, lightning-shaped holes opening up, radiating outwards.

Not a puzzle, a shattering glass. That's what he was.

Had he really just been speaking to himself this whole time?

Everyone was looking at him, looking through him, reflecting themselves in the shards. There were so many people and yet how was it that he was—

No.

He had seen Atem in that other dimension.

That powerful essence had shot right through his eyes like sunlight and it was in his body and his dreams and his head and his thoughts and those thoughts never abandoned him.

All the data he collected, the camera footage, and magazine clippings, and voice recordings, and his taunts, and those eyes, and his smile, and the dreams, the stars, the rain, the birds, all with Kaiba, waiting and waiting, crying like seagulls in the long night.

He believed that those words he had said had gone somewhere.

Atem was all around him, inside him, an inevitability for him.

They would all come to see that.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about the period in Kaiba’s life after Atem was gone and before he succeeded in seeing him again and felt like a vignette was the best way of going about it. I also wanted to practice description while not overdoing it to boredom, as well as make it really gray, desperate, and painful without making it overly sentimental. Here’s hoping I struck a balance but if not, hopefully something worked. Thanks for reading.


End file.
